The True Love Wedding Dress (22 page)

“No, no. This will not do. I refuse to have you throw this in my face every time we have a fight, and, God help us, Lucy, we will have many fights.”

“But we will also have many reconciliations,” she said cheerfully.

“Be that as it may . . .” He dropped to his knees in the black closet, grabbing her hands and clasping them tightly. “Marry me, Lucy St. James. Please marry me.”

Her hand reached down and brushed against his face. “Yes, Alex.”

He turned her hand over and pressed a warm kiss in the center of her palm.

“But
I
get to wear the bride’s dress.”

He rose, catching her up in his arms. “Hussy. Is that why you pitched that bloody dress somewhere? So you won’t be shone down?”

She started laughing. “I swear, I have no idea where it is!”

“Thank God,” he muttered, his head bending for a kiss as he reached for the door. It swung open, letting the light in.

Finally.

 

 

“R
ain.” A small leather boot kicked listlessly at a

A small leather boot kicked listlessly at a dust ball, as the boot’s owner, eleven-year-old Eliza Cooper, peered out the attic window to the sodden fields below.

Having passed nearly half of her life in the Washington Territory, Eliza was certainly no stranger to inclement weather. Today, however, the dark skies proved especially annoying, for not only had she been unable to take her journal up to University Hill as she’d planned, but her search through the attic’s cob-webbed corners had yielded little to amuse her this long, wet afternoon.

Expectantly, she pushed her freckled nose up against the sooty square of glass and searched the distant horizon. Habit compelled her to look north, even though she knew that her father would not be home for many weeks yet. Joshua Cooper’s logging business forced him to travel for extended periods of time, which meant that Eliza was left to her own devices and to the questionable care of their housekeeper, Seamus Macgorrie, a taciturn, one-legged Irishman who didn’t much relish his role of reluctant nanny.

“If only . . .” Eliza whispered, the plea as nebulous and unformed as her puff of breath that frosted the tiny pane.

With a sigh, she gave one more lackluster kick to the dust ball, when suddenly a stray beam of sunshine fought its way through the dense clouds to shoot past her into the garret. The unexpected ray, bright and golden, shone like a lance as it sliced across the room to fall squarely upon the brass latch of a large, weathered trunk. Eliza’s fair brows beetled together.
Odd.
How had she failed to notice that unfamiliar chest during her foraging minutes ago?

She scooted forward and quickly scanned the trunk, finding no clues as to its ownership. Where had it come from? Her father could not have brought it home, as she was certain he’d not been up to the attic in months. And Macgorrie most assuredly could not have hauled such a weighty piece up the stairs unassisted. Curiosity astir, Eliza lifted the lid.

“Goodness me.”

She had not known that fabric could be this rich, this lustrous. Why, it was like a moonbeam. A satiny moonbeam. Slowly she reached down and pulled it from the trunk, stretching her thin arms in front of her to better study her discovery.

She had found a gown.

A beautiful white gown.

Beneath her chilled fingers, the silken folds rustled softly.

Eliza blinked, then stared in wonder at the gown. As if from nowhere, an idea had popped into her head. An idea so wonderful, so amazingly perfect, she could not understand why she’d not thought of it before.

“Of course,” she said aloud. “Of course.” The answer to everything . . .

 

 

“Q
uee-Queen. Of the . . .” Penelope Martin squinted hard at the letters. “Fai-Fai-Fairies.”

With a satisfied nod, she closed the moldy volume of Shakespearean works in her lap and gave the cover a hearty slap. Having just completed
Much Ado About Nothing,
Eliza had announced her wish to play Titania this afternoon, and Penny, hoping to surprise her, was determined to find one or two simple costumes to add to their playacting. Now what might she use for a fairy queen?

Last month, if anyone had told Penny that someday she’d be looking forward to an afternoon of Shakespeare with an eleven-year-old child, she would have accused that person of tipping one too many whiskeys. But Eliza loved acting out the plays, and her youthful enthusiasm was infectious. In fact, Eliza’s portrayal of Dogberry yesterday had made Penny laugh so hard, she’d actually split open the seams of her threadbare corset.

As she set the book aside, Penny glanced at her valise, left empty in the corner of the bedroom. It was difficult to believe that a mere three weeks earlier she had carried that valise off the steamer after a fifty-seven-day journey across two oceans.

 

The wind had been sharp that morning when she first set foot on the dock, her gaze sweeping over her new home. Her survey took less than two seconds. Although she’d assumed that Seattle would be small, she was still amazed that anyone might describe a smattering of clapboard houses as an honest-to-goodness city. Why, to her mind, it looked to be no more than a village. And a teeny little village at that.

Perhaps three or four dozen buildings dotted the landscape, their square silhouettes holding back the forest that hovered just beyond the hills. Sawmills lined the edge of the bay and, instead of paved streets, muddy paths smelling of ocean salt climbed up from the many wooden piers fronting the water. A buggy or two rattled through the mud, and a handful of riders on horses clustered at the end of the wharf, yet it was still quiet enough for Penny to hear the gentle slap of waves against the shore.

“Well . . .” She squared her shoulders with determination, then gave her satchel a reassuring jiggle. “Whatever it is, at least it ain’t Boston.”

A group of dockworkers lumbered past carrying a pallet of crates, and Penny hurried to step aside. As she did so, her attention was caught by two people approaching from the other end of the dock. The pair presented a curious picture: the elderly, peg-legged man wearing a harsh scowl as he thumped down the gangway and, at his side, a wisp of a girl skipping along, her grin as wide as the Pacific. Although the man sported a shabby tartan tam, the girl was bare-headed, her mass of curly blond hair unlike anything Penny had seen before. Resembling an enormous cloud of white spun cotton, the child’s hair swirled about her head, looking almost as if it were something alive, separate from the girl herself.

So taken was she by the two that Penny did not notice until the last moment that they were stopping directly in front of her.

“Miss Martin?” the child asked in a tone that reminded Penny of a librarian, although, in truth, she’d never actually known a librarian.

“Yes?”

“How do you do?” The child thrust her hand forward, forcing Penny to drop her valise so that she could return the greeting. The girl’s handshake was as self-assured as her manner.

“I am Eliza Cooper and this”—she gestured with her thumb to the man standing a pace back—“this is Macgorrie.”

The old gentleman bobbed his chin.

Penny nodded cautiously and smoothed her auburn hair with nerve-twittery fingers. Since she herself had not known which steamer she’d be taking from Port Townsend, she had not expected to be met, and she certainly had not expected to be met by this peculiar welcoming committee. After all, it had been a Mrs. Cooper who had written, offering a teaching position, and the same Mrs. Cooper had wired money to pay for the traveling expenses of train and ship. . . . So then, had Mrs. Cooper sent one of her children to fetch the new schoolteacher from the docks?

“If you can point out your trunks,” the girl prompted, waving again in her regal fashion to where the workers were setting out the freight, “Macgorrie will arrange for their delivery, and we can be on our way.”

“Ah.” Penny cast a quick glance first to the pile of trunks and then to the valise at her feet. “I brung only this.”

“Just that?” The girl blinked once, her eyes the color of wild violets, before shrugging away her surprise. “Very well. Off we go, then.”

Once settled inside the carriage—where Penny had to force herself not to stare at the luxuries of an honest-to-goodness closed carriage—a silence fell. After a lifetime spent amid the constant sound of chatter, Penny could not tolerate the quiet, particularly not when she was so nervous that her gloves were growing damp.

“I reckon Mrs. Cooper is your mother?”

Her question seemed to echo in the coach’s confines as Eliza’s lips pursed, in either deliberation or disapproval. Penny could not say which.

“Your aunt?” Penny offered.

“Mmm.” Now not only her mouth, but Eliza’s entire face, as thin and white as parchment, scrunched up. “There is something I need to tell you, Miss Martin, and since I can see no benefit in delaying the telling of it—”

Penny’s breath caught. These last weeks, she had often wondered as she leaned against the steamer’s railing, gazing out to sea, if it all had been too good to be true. She had told herself not to fret, that her luck had finally turned. She had vowed to make this opportunity work one way or the other, convincing herself that it had been nothing short of heaven-sent. But now . . .

“My mother is dead.”

The breath Penny had been holding released in short, jagged bursts.
Sweet Mary . . .

“I am sorry,” she managed, even as she sensed that Eliza’s matter-of-fact declaration seemed wrong. Unnatural. Where were the grief, the tears, the evidence of loss?

“To tell you the truth, Miss Martin, my mother has been dead these past six years.”

Six years?
Penny felt as if she were back aboard ship, fighting to keep her balance during rough seas.

“I-I don’t understand.”

“Allow me to explain, although it’s rather a long story. You see, Mr. Asa Mercer, who is a very important man in these parts, recently brought a group of ladies from Massachusetts to be schoolteachers here in Seattle. They arrived and everyone was delighted, since there are scarcely enough women to be teachers or to be anything, really.” Eliza’s speech came faster and faster as she spoke, her words tumbling together so that Penny had to concentrate to make sense of what she was hearing. “Well, Mr. Mercer’s idea struck me as a very fine notion indeed, so I wrote to a Mr. Shakely, who is a Boston relation of my friend the widow Murphy, and since I could not advertise for a teacher as eleven-year-old Eliza Cooper, I had to pretend to be someone older, don’t you see?”

“
You
sent the letter?” Penny bit her lower lip. “And the money?”

“Well, of course I did have some help. You needn’t worry, however,” Eliza continued. “The money I sent you was rightfully mine to send, and I would not have brought you all this way without good cause. A teaching opportunity does await you, although perhaps it is not precisely the sort of employment you were expecting.” At this point, the child delicately cleared her throat. “The position I am offering you, Miss Martin, is that of personal governess. To me.”